


The Press and the Release

by spleenqueen



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Cutting, M/M, Self Harm, i am so sorry wtf, i am sorry again, i don't know how this website works, i dont think you are supposed to use these tags like tumblr tags, i literally hate getting triggered so i am tagging everything, liam doesn't come in until like 2/3 through the thing, self injury, trigger warning: self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-15
Updated: 2013-12-15
Packaged: 2018-01-04 17:02:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1083468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spleenqueen/pseuds/spleenqueen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>with the blade, comes so much. zayn is falling, but liam (eventually) picks him up.  (trigger warning for semi-graphic depictions of self-harm) </p><p>(reboot/rewrite is on the way!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Press and the Release

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in middle school. i am bringing it back. 
> 
> as someone who has spent six very long years struggling with self harm (and someone who is still waist deep in that struggle), writing this was like a biopic and a journal but also a fanfiction. i love one direction. i hate cutting. this is a very strangely put together combination of the two things.

There is something strangely sobering about the press of metal into your skin, the sharp intake of breath as you pull your hand away, the drip-drop and then sudden flow of redredred out of your veins and onto the floor. The way you drag that blade down again, press harder, go deeper, it’s not something one easily forgets. There is a very addicting thing in that little moment of clarity, because you do it again and again, day after day, one cut becomes 100 in twenty-five endless minutes and then oh-fuck you can’t go more than a day without pulling out one of your little friends, bloodstained and shiny.

It was an accident, the first time. He didn’t even know what he was doing, really. Just scrolling absently through tumblr at 4:30 in the morning to see what people said about him and the boys when he finds himself reading something about cutting, reading about how all the pain in the pit of your chest will go away with just a little bit more on the surface. The words draw him in and he’s shocked, actually, at the way he just has this insane urge to try it try it try it, because if all these people, if it helped them then it has to save him, save his stupid self… Right?

Before he knows what he’s doing he’s fumbling around in his bathroom, looking for a razor and trying madly to crack it, rip it open and get a blade out. It seems like centuries, he takes to get that blade, and when it comes he tries for his wrist but then reconsiders. No. No one can see, he’s in a boy band for chrissakes and they aren’t stressed and lost and insecure enough to bring a blade to themselves. No, they’re young and perfect and pretty, heartthrobs, they turn girls into screaming, sobbing messes, wrecked.

So instead he lifts up his shirt and drags that little razor blade across his stomach, above the waistband of his sweats. He’s afraid, tentative, he doesn’t press very hard and doesn’t go very deep, doesn’t keep it to him for very long, but he bleeds and he runs his fingers through the red and across the tan. There isn’t much difference but there is, and for the first time in a long time, he’s good at hiding it, Zayn feels alive.

He wants to be horrified, he wants to be disgusted with himself, but it felt so good and he felt so awake and he was breathing. The world was tangible and reality made some jumbled sort of sense. He saw color and he felt beauty in that liquid that came out of his veins, in the release of all the hell he had trapped inside. Zayn ripped a void on his stomach and all the horror emptied out with the blood and the in-out of his breathing, the expand-contract of his chest, didn’t feel like an illusion.

He’s good at hiding this, too. Zayn’s creative, lurks tumblr a lot more often, but it’s not blogs dedicated to his face or the other boys and their faces, not fanfiction or imagine blogs. No, Zayn’s crossed over to the self-harm section, stumbling through the cuts, cutting, self-injury tags. He sees skinny girls, covered in cuts and scars, bleeding wounds, words like emoslutbitchfatcunt carved into pale flesh. Zayn sees posts about how much people hate themselves and everyone else, and he feels like he’s not alone when he’s ripping himself apart and silently hoping for an artery he knows he’ll never find.

The blogs teach him how to hide it, where to cut, what to use to clean. How to Kill Yourself, Slowly 101, his cynical fuck-up mind whispers at him. His laugh has never been bitterer, never been more of a lie.

But he can walk around and flirt with fans again. Zayn’s perfectly capable of acting as if he isn’t dying inside every time he looks anyone in the face, and the questions the boys had been asking, you okay you need something do you want to talk, they stop. They stop, all in thanks to the little red lines on his body that aren’t taking over his life, thank you very much, as the voice says. He wonders if that voice is his conscience, sometimes, but that is the driving force between right and wrong and this one, melodic but mocking, only gives him reason to hate and regret his existence in its entirety.

Liam still sends him these looks sometimes, scrutinizing and analyzing, silently questioning his best mate if he needs help. Liam is that kind of person, caring and concerned and sweet, but he needs to keep out of Zayn’s business. Desperately, he attempts to brush off Liam’s looks every time he slips away to his bathroom to scrape at himself because he’s just the slightest bit guilty Liam’s still worried. Only the slightest bit, he tells himself, and not because it’s Liam, but because someone knows that something’s off. Deep in the back of his head the voice whispers that denial rots idiots like him from the inside out, and he scrapes more to shut it up.

It’s a powerful feeling, it’s control. He didn’t realize that he felt so out of control until he had it. The emptiness inside and the dislike he had for himself, the way that he did not belong in this band with these perfect people, the way he wasn’t pretty enough or attractive enough or intelligent or talented enough, never enough never-not-ever, and with his blade, he kills it, the demon inside. It’s barely there, but he feels a little something, a little masked, watered-down contentment.

Management lives his life for him, tells him what to do and what to wear and where to go and how to be Zayn Malik. He just wants control over one little thing, and with a blade in his hand, hovering over his hip or his stomach, his thigh, bicep, ankle, shoulder - he holds his life in his hands because with just a little bit of pressure and a flick of his wrist, he can see his blood. One wrong move and he could bleed out on the floor, stain the tile red and die, pathetically, in a pool of his own life-giving liquid, with a blade next to him.

He should hate it, it should make him stop, throw the blade away, put an end to this. The thought just makes him want more.

Zayn didn’t think that it would go this far. He was confident it would happen just once or twice; a few times when he only really needed it. He’d use it until things got back together, when he felt like he was okay and smiling didn’t make him feel like such a fucking liar.

He read through the blogs and they all said that this was the way that everyone got into it, the way that everyone ended up with a body covered in scars and being completely alone. Just you and your head, the mind that hated you, the mind that killed you. They said that was what everyone thought, just once or twice, never again and throw away the blades. The next thing you know, though, is that you’re stuck with it and can’t remember when was the last time you didn’t need a piece of godforsaken metal to get out of bed in the morning.

Every time Zayn picked up a blade, whether it was his first, flimsy sheets of aluminum or the strong, steel, single edge blades he risked buying, he promised that he would not have a repeat of the first time he smoked a cigarette. He promised himself that he would not fall in love metal and sharps and blood and pain as he had with nicotine and smoke. He swears he can’t let it go that far, the mere thought is too scary and it makes his temples throb and he has to bring out a blade to clear his mind. The image in his head, the ghost of addiction dancing at the nape of his neck, scares him more than going too deep or being caught or losing the band and the boys, despite knowing he doesn’t deserve them.

When he starts carrying blades around at signings, when he starts picking up things that he thinks he could cut with and pocketing them, when he drags his wrists against brick buildings, just to have the scratches, Zayn knows he’s kind of fucked. He tries not to care. He has no reason to care, right? Right, of course. No one knows, no one’s said anything, and it keeps him from looking lost or fucked up and the boys know he’s doing great, doing better than he was.

Except, Niall’s quieter when it’s just the two of them; it was like that before, Zayn had that kind of effect on Niall, helping him to calm down and talk slowly and eat a little more like a civilized human being and less like a savage. But Zayn’s noticed it’s different now, between them, tense and apprehensive. One night they’re at his flat and everything seems normal, but Niall isn’t fucking around like he would be any other time.

In fact, he’s watching Zayn with those giant blue eyes and he’s silent, and all Zayn can think is fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck does he know does he know does-he-know. He nearly chokes, asking Niall what’s wrong and then the blond goes into some rambling thing about how he’s homesick and it seems just the slightest bit forced, Zayn could always tell. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask any questions. He just holds Niall and comforts him, shushing him and speaking softly, faking his way through his panic. But when Niall goes home later that night, Zayn’s thighs pay for it in blood and he pays in having the slightest difficulty walking the next day and not being able to wear the light jeans he wanted, in fear of his secret seeping through the fabric.

Eventually, Zayn cracks. He starts panicking, starts withdrawing in on himself, pulling back in, and he’s confused. Didn’t he start this so he wouldn’t have to hide? Wasn’t this supposed to make him function like a normal human being? His scratches look pathetic, that’s all they are, quick drags of a blade, nothing like they should be. He should have gaping cuts that split with the slightest movement. He’s pathetic, he’s nothing, he’s worthless – he can’t even hurt himself properly. And so he cuts more and more and more.

He tries to limit himself. Once a day, he says, only once because this will get out of hand. Once a day meant a single cut or just a few and now it means one sitting. One sitting was one more than six but no more than 15 and now, it’s become 30 some wounds and it fucking hurts to move. But Zayn doesn’t even care because he’s pretty damned sure without it he’s going to die, and he won’t even try to end it himself. He’ll just fall over and quit breathing from the itch in his skin and the flood in his veins, the deluge that wants nothing but out, and the twitching of his fingertips because they haven’t touched metal in far too long.

Zayn doesn’t need anyone, doesn’t need anything but a blade and cigarettes. That’s the lie he tells himself, just so that he doesn’t actually go for the arteries that if he hits, they’ll kill him. Late at night, Harry googles himself and Zayn plans possible ways to die, while he rips himself away from the boys, from everyone. He cuts phone calls with his mother, his sisters, strangely short, because their voices make him guilty. He’ll always remember the time he was fumbling with his phone while one of them cried into his ear while he bled everywhere.

He doesn’t go out with the boys as much, telling them he’s tired or that clubs have started boring him, since just one more lie can’t hurt. If he does he has one drink and slips away when Harry and Louis are entangled in each other and grinding obscenely on the dance floor while Liam scolds Niall and howls about “the media seeing him with a hand up a girl’s skirt, think of our reputation!”

Zayn’s going to be okay and he’s going to put his stupid life back on track, with the help of his little friend, a blade. He’ll flirt with fans and sign their shit and sing his solos gloriously and confidently, because he’s Zayn Malik. He’s the shy, mysterious guy of One Direction and girls fall at his feet and into his bed, and no one ever asks questions when he sits in a corner and broods or is silent in interviews because it’s just who he is.

Zayn remembers when he would bed girls left and right, empty sex for an empty boy and lots of groupies with fake eyelashes and tramp stamps and belly bars. He knows he can’t do that anymore, because scars and cuts don’t go over well with any kind of girl. He just flirts harder over the table and cuts a little deeper every night because it makes his skin feel grimy, it makes his veins go hot and tainted and it has to come out.

When he stands in front of the mirror naked, he doesn’t know how to feel about what he sees. He sees scars and cuts and ugly, but somehow those scars are pretty and he wants moremoremore, more raised bumps that get purple in the cold and sick white stripes across his skin. And so he gives himself more, just a little bit more of his one beauty. He does it even when he feels like there’s nothing wrong and everything is fine and beautiful, sunshine and rainbows and butterflies and Niall’s laugh and Lou’s smile and One Direction is perfect, says the internet.

How wrong those little girls are, Zayn thinks, as he carves delicate x-shaped patterns into his skin. But Zayn loses control, he’s stopped regulating where the cuts go, how they look. No more straight lines in certain places, now it’s just rampant scratching and slitting wherever he wants and oh fuck, they are where people can actually see them. So Zayn starts wearing long sleeves wherever he goes, no matter the heat or the sun or the weather, and he requests wardrobe changes in a dull voice when he’s told to wear short sleeves and he doesn’t hesitate to pull a drama-queen bitch fit if someone tells him no. Anything for his secret, he’s already made an asshole out of himself in ten million ways, what’s one more and a pissed off manager?

Paul glares and the wardrobe people bitch, and the boys just stare and try to stay out of and Zayn hates the fact that he just really has no available fucks to give. They stop asking but the stares start, he just demands what he wants and hopes for the best that nothing will go wrong. Zayn flirts ever harder with the fans, takes his anger out on cigarettes and on walls in dressing rooms and the corridors leading up to stages, bloodied knuckles become his favorite accessory. He just tells everyone that it’s the fatigue of the road, the fatigue of being as famous as they are, he’s tired and he just wants some time to himself. His door slams in the face of HarryLouisNiall, the door still closes with Liam but it’s gentler and Zayn hates himself a little bit for more and he pays for it in blood. But he’s okay because he’s got this under control and he isn’t getting triggered in public as much but if he does he can count the seconds to until he can slip away, breathe in breathe out and bleedbleedbleed.

The mirror becomes his enemy the day he wakes up and realization hits him in the manner of a freight train. Because once you pick up that blade and put it in your hand you sign your soul away, and in the very fine print of that contract is the fact that in the end you’re going to hate yourself more than before you did when you started. Zayn realizes oh-my-fucking-god what am I doing with myself, what am I doing with my life, mutilating my body in a noncommittal sense to ward off suicide, making up excuses to hate myself and not even trying to appreciate a single good thing that comes my way. He has everything and a half, he’s in a world famous boy band and he has amazing friends, which he alienates mercilessly, money and fame and all the things he dreamed of all his stupid, superficial life. But what is he doing? He’s cutting for no reason and he’s pathetic, his cuts are pathetic, his very existence is the epitome of pathetic.

He’s a waste of space, a waste of skinbloodbone and supposed talent, talent he’s never actually believed he had. Zayn is stupid, an idiot, an invalid, his skin crawls with the fact that he’s doing this and he has no reason to. Other people really suffer, feel true pain, are lost in themselves for a fucking reason. He’s just bored and tired and uncharacteristically numb and he wants out of this hole he’s dug for himself but he has a feeling that it’s much too steep to climb.

The hole’s getting deeper and so are his cuts, he’s falling down ever-faster. Zayn is Alice but his rabbit hole isn’t going to Wonderland. He’s headed straight to hell and hell is his own mind, and there is no way out. Every morning he rolls out of bed onto the floor, pulls out a blade from under his nightstand, rips up his skin and tries not to cry because he hates himself more than he ever has in his life and Zayn hasn’t been able to remember a time he didn’t pray to not wake up, each night before bed, since long before bootcamp.

He tries not to chain smoke and fails miserably, he tries not to let his voice catch when he talks casually to the boys, he tries to meet their eyes and he tries not stand as far away as possible because if they touch him they’ll either feel scars or split cuts and he is fucking sick of washing blood out of his clothes. Every time he tries, no matter what it is that he’s trying for, exactly, he fails. It just makes him want to die a little bit more and it scares him to think that he doesn’t really care, not anymore.

Management looks concerned and they whisper constantly around him, wardrobe speaks to him delicately, gently, like a child, and hands him long-sleeved shirts without question, and they let him stumble into some corner to change, hidden. Niall bites his lips, swollen red and it’s triggering and it shouldn’t be for the love of god, and tries to fill the tense gaps of silence with useless chatter, pacing and pulling at his hair. Harry and Lou stand closer together with each passing day, pressed tight against each other and speaking in hushed voices, murmured words Zayn knows he doesn’t want to hear. And Liam, Liam just sits up straight in a chair, unspeaking, staring either at Zayn, out of the corner of his eye, or at his hands, delicately folded in his lap.

They all stare, but Zayn feels Liam’s eyes the most. The boys all stare, but Liam’s tired look of worry and fear and this pity-like thing affects him the most. The worry in those pretty eyes, the fear, makes Zayn sick to his stomach with hatred for himself, but the pity look makes him hate Liam. But he can’t hate Liam because Liam is Liam, Daddy Direction, Mister Mature and Mister Perfect. Liam doubted his badly faked happiness; Liam took notice when none of the others did.

Even if they all stare, even if Liam stares, none of them ask questions. Not ever once. He gets the occasional how are you, you okay mate you seem a bit out of it, but when he brushes them off they ask nothing else. With Zayn’s limited emotional ability, it will not hesitate to kill that for you, isn’t sure how to feel. He doesn’t know what scares him, what hurts him more – the fact that no one even bothers, or the fact that he feels actually quite content with the fact that they don’t care enough to step out of their own little personal bubbles to see that his has burst. It reinforces every reason Zayn has to curse his stupid entity and to make himself bleed.

He has no appetite, not anymore; with each day he eats less and less and bleeds more and more. He misses his cues in rehearsals, his solos are dull and his notes seem wrong. Zayn either doesn’t sleep or he can barely force himself out of his bed, even with the promise of a blade, coffee, cigarettes and sunlight, the only tangible things left. His demeanor darkens as the seconds tick by; the sheer loathing he has in himself multiplies, divides and reproduces as a virus in his soul – if he has one left. Zayn watches himself decay and dehumanize in the mirror, from both the inside-out and outside-in: the sickly, worthless feeling of I deserve nothing but to die, and the cuts that litter his body when he tries fiercely to bleed that thought out.

Hell is an empty abyss and he’s found himself there and he wants outoutout, but that’s impossible since he opened the door and walked in, and when he closed it, the door locked behind him.

Liam has always had this piercing, pressing sort of suspicion, about Zayn and the way he seemed to disappear, to fall back into his bones, drip into emptiness. Unfortunately, self-injury was a phenomenon and part of human life and human nature that he had dealt with more than once in his life. He’s watched friends suffer through this, fight a war against their selves. They’ve changed, they’re become completely different people and it happened right before his eyes.

The scariest part is that he sees the same in Zayn. Liam knows all the warning signs, forced himself to memorize them to prevent from happening to anyone he loved ever again. No one who he cared about would ever bleed out on their bathroom floor, not again not again not again, especially not if he has the means to stop it. But Liam is incapable of talking to people about things like this, heavy shit he cannot at all handle. Liam’s failing himself and failing everyone else as this fucking “responsible” role he was somehow assigned, so he just frets silently and stares at Zayn and prays he stops or says something. He hopes and hopes, despite the fact that, from experience, he knows that it won’t happen.

Liam observes in pained silence as Zayn slowly wastes away to an empty shell of the person he once was, eons before. He doesn’t even talk anymore; he snaps when people speak to him and barely even rambles nonsensically on twitter anymore. His phone doesn’t bother ringing when Liam or any of the boys try to call, it just goes directly to voicemail and his mother calls and asks how Zayn is doing. Liam lies through his teeth, tells him there’s a problem with his mobile and that night he punches a dent into his wall because fuck, this is going to end so horribly, so horribly it can’t be put into words, unless he finds something to do, and he has no clue what there is he can do.

A long time ago, Zayn gave Liam a key to his apartment. He said something about how the last time he got shitfaced, he lost his key somewhere, and he woke up the next morning, hung-over in the hallway. That was ages ago, Zayn never did lose his keys again, but Liam still has it just in case and he seriously wants to take advantage of the situation. They see each other when they’re working, sure, but Zayn keeps himself closed off and he doesn’t even try to look up from the ground unless he’s being spoken to. Liam can’t get to him, can’t find a crack in the wall to try and figure out if his fears really are true, and he definitely can’t do it in public, in front of the others. They think something is wrong with him, too, whispered exchanges and the words depression loneliness grief, but that’s it – they don’t see the true caliber of the situation.

The key is his first and last and only hope, to stop this before it gets out of hand even though Liam knows that at this point, Zayn’s at the precipice of breakdown because Liam is stupid and slow and unobservant. He decides that he’ll go see Zayn, confront him or something, one night. He wants to wait and see how smart this is, plan what he’ll say or do or anything, but he knows he’ll lose his nerve. Liam tears apart his flat looking for the little key, the lifeline that Zayn gave to him all those months prior, at a time when things were remotely normal. Liam finds it, he opens his own door and shuts it and his head is screaming at him both that he needs to do this and it’s the stupidest thing he’s ever thought of in his entire life, but he goes anyway. His heart convinces him that he needs to go, no matter how stupid that sounds.

Pressing it into the lock, turning the key, Liam counts the seconds and the ripples of muscles and tendons in his fingers, forearms, wrists, bones and tissues moving together, phalanges carpals metacarpals ulna radius. He opens the door, as quietly as possible. The whole place is dark, silent, except for a sliver of light that he knows is the bathroom, the door ajar and bright bulbs blazing from the ceiling. Liam is tempted to call out for Zayn, but instead he just closes the door behind him, places the key on a table and leans heavily against the wood. His breathing is unstable and his heart is beating fast. He has absolutely not the slightest clue if Zayn is home or if he’s even awake, and he’s terrified of what he’ll find in that bathroom. Liam’s terrified, scared out of his wits, and it’s rightly so.

Zayn is at home. Zayn is awake. Zayn is covered in scars and fresh cuts, some scabbed over, days old, and some new, still bleeding. The tile, porcelain-stark-hospital-white, and his skin are smeared with red, the fluid that gives life. Liam abhors himself more than anything he’s ever seen because how could have been so blind, when it’s gotten so bad, when it’s gone this far? His breath catches in his throat and this is almost an out of body experience, because he doesn’t know what to do.

In his head, Liam always said that Zayn had doe’s eyes, like a Bambi in the headlights. Now, his eyes are so big in his head it would be comical in any other situation. He’s still beautiful, Liam notes; his face is haggard-empty-lost, pale, even, except for the stripe of blood that runs from forehead to shoulder, in the pattern of his fingers. The blade in Zayn’s hands drops to the floor and the silence breaks and tears start falling from those eyes and Zayn’s dragging himself away from Liam, running away from where he is curled around himself on the floor, surrounded by his blood and self-loathing.

Zayn can’t even process this, can’t even form words or conscious thoughts. His mind is a mess, how did Liam get in here, what does he think of me now and you crazy you’re ugly ugly uglyuglyuglyugly, worthless disgusting and this is why he’s seen you you’re exposed you are better off dead, hisses the voice.

Zayn pulls his knees in close, dips his head between them, and around his sobs and his desire to grab his blade and run it down his throat, he’s whimpering out “Don’t look at me, I’m ugly. I’m disgusting, I’m nothing.” To say it, to admit it to someone other than himself, is liberating, but when he glances up and sees the shock and pain in Liam’s eyes, not repulsion, he hates himself a little bit more. “No one was supposed to find out,” he mutters, and the tears come stronger when Liam’s arms wrap around him.

Liam never once had any expectation that it would get to this point so quickly. The thought of watching the boy break, watching this strong, beautiful boy shatter into a thousand slivers of Zayn, hadn’t even begun to cross his mind. Liam is always calm, always in control; he has no matter what a plan or can formulate one to save the day on a moment’s notice. But in this time, in this place, his mind is empty. All he can think to do is kneel down and wrap his arms around Zayn, hold him and shush him, let him bleed into his shirt, and tell him that he’ll be okay.

After a while the sobs subside and soon the same is for the ever-falling tears and the hiccups and coughs and sniffles. Composure is regained for both boys, and Liam is silent, pouring peroxide over the wounds Zayn can’t reach and gently bandaging them. He cleans Zayn of blood and bleaches the tile. But once again, Liam is trapped.

He really just cannot just say anything, can’t mention this or get any true help for Zayn because that is how things go to shit within the blink of an eye, he knows. Opening his stupid mouth will only bring monumentally more tears and more blood for not only him or Zayn, but for the whole band and countless more people. Liam can only speak to Zayn, only hope he gets through to him and puts an end to this before everything goes down a one-way road to a place even darker than this, with no way to get back.

So Liam sits him down, and meets his eyes, forces Zayn to meet his. He stares him boldly in the face, tells him he’s beautiful-perfect-gorgeous, that he needs to stop, that this has to end, for the band, for the boys, for Liam, and Zayn blinks at him. Zayn tells him to fuck off, voice devoid of emotion, of conscious thought, of life.

Zayn tells him to fuck off because Liam is telling the truth. He’s telling the truth and Zayn knows it, but he’s too pathetic to act on it, he doesn’t know how to stop and he’s pretty sure he can’t. The blade and his blood are all he has, and suddenly Zayn’s mouth opens and it all comes spilling out, words twisting together and sounding choked off and almost inhuman. He’s emptying out the ugly parts of himself, the dark and horrid things that swirl around in the cesspool that is his head. Every tiny little thing he’s kept locked up in his heart and released, entombed, in scars all over his skin, and the tears and the crying come again, he cries and so does Liam. But Zayn sobs and wails openly, dampening Liam’s already bloodstained shirt with salty liquid. The convulsions, the crying, they’re so strong he’s losing his breath, and silent tears make trails down Liam’s cheeks.

The next morning Liam throws away his shirt, even if he’s an expert on taking blood out of fabric, frequent childhood nosebleeds. His skill doesn’t concern him, not now, because he can’t bring himself to do it, because it’s Zayn’s blood, and he can’t just bleach it out and watch the chemicals trickle down the drainpipes. Liam hopes it’s the last time he has to see it, the blood, ever in his life, but he has an unsavory feeling that it won’t be the case.

The next morning, despite the loss of Liam’s shirt, is a little better, more coherent. Still tears but less sobs, and they both can think a little clearer, understand a little better. But after a while, Zayn snaps again. The gentle pressing from Liam is too much, the soft words of please, please, please it needs to end. Liam is Zayn’s solace, the only way out of this bottomless pit he threw himself into. For the first time in what seems to be a century, Zayn forces himself to meet Liam’s eyes, wasn’t forced by Liam, and around little sobs he tries hopelessly to choke, he begs. He knows that he is begging, his ego stings, but he doesn’t care. An opportunity like this, someone a genuine desire to help him, will not come again soon and he needs this help. It is glaringly clear, bright and taunting, almost.

“Please, you need to help me get out of this,” he pleads. He whimpers and he begs he forces himself not to give a spare fuck, because this, it’s the truth, and it’s a verbal slap in the face. Liam squeezes his shoulder, looks him in the eye, and makes a promise: he will, no matter what happens, he will.

Liam doesn’t let Zayn wander off by himself to smoke anymore, never lets him sit in silence. Always, Liam will make up some stupid thing to talk about or have him sit with the boys and Zayn has no space, no space at all. When they became a band that was the one thing that he thought he hated the most, the lack of privacy and being with the same four morons all day. But now, Zayn’s come to realize, that he doesn’t mind, in fact he likes being around them again, likes being around people. Being isolated, cut off and hidden away behind a wall, is an atrocious feeling, especially when you’ve erected the wall yourself and becoming ostracized from your best mates was your own stupid mistake, your own stupid decision. Zayn used to crave being alone, alone with his mind, and look where it got him; the heartbreak on Liam’s face when he let this little gem slip was worse than any cut, any burn.

The days go by, and it comes to Liam, one hazy afternoon, Zayn asleep on his sofa and a glass of juice in Liam’s hand, that he really loves this idiot. He always saw him as a brother, a friend, but now he’s grasped that he really loves him, this stupid honey-skinned and scar covered knobhead who felt like he was lone in the world. Liam Payne not only loves the idiot that calls him at three in the morning, choking on “I need to cut, I need to, I need to, helpmehelpmehelpme Liam, I can’t,” but he’s fallen in love with him. Those feelings are shockingly different, new and electric and shocking, and just as terrifying as it was when this whole ordeal began, with first his fears and his inquiries, and later on bathroom incident and his thrown-away shirt.

And then Liam can’t help it and on another morning, grey and dreary and cold, he’s kissing Zayn, kissing his mouth and kissing the trigger away, whatever it was – he doesn’t remember. He really hopes that Zayn’s forgotten, too, because he’s slipped up again and Zayn’s furious with, disgusted at himself. Liam’s sad, a little dejected and some of his hope and some of his heart died with the blood that came Zayn his spilt, but he knows that relapse is a part of recovery. Warm hands are grabbing Liam’s neck and his shoulders and Zayn’s kissing him back, trying to choke back tears and his confused “What are you doing, Liam,” is met with an “I don’t know,” and lips pressing back firmer, more frantic, against Zayn’s.

Sadness is a funny thing, not funny amusing but funny fucked-up, and Zayn knows it. Honestly, though, he’s never considered himself to be sad and he’s not sad now, just a little bit lost. Fame presses down on you, the weight of the world on Atlas’s shoulders, just like your insecurities and the tiny fears and miniature hatreds. They’ll all add up, and when you press enter on your calculator you get this fucked up tumult of pseudo-melancholia, anger, and dead inside. A lot of the time now, that morose concoction of disastrous feelings and ugly, superficial emotions taken way too far out of context is Zayn. Most days, he feels like an unintelligent, unattractive and useless twat, but relief, alleviation, is found in Liam, his voice and his eyes and his smile, and not a blade.

Long, long ago, way back when, in secondary school, Liam made a friend of a pasty skinned girl with shiny green eyes and long hair, bleached blond by the sun. She had scars up and down her arms and you if could see her thighs, angry red and violent, raised up scars, or when her socks fell down, along her calves were the battles she fought for years. The rest of her body, whispered the school, was covered in them, too. Liam remembers her not because of her scars, but from the way her eyes would pierce him or anyone else, like she knew something they didn’t. He remembers her for something amazing he told him, right before school started again in year 9 and she moved to god-knows-where.

This girl said, as they sat and walked through the streets in Wolverhampton, dancing in the sweet summer sunshine-rain and smiling at each other, this miraculous thing. She said that one does not measure recovery with how many days you’ve gone without cutting, burning, scratching, ripping out your hair; how long it’s been since you decided to stop or the days between now and your last relapse. Absently, looking down at her feet, she wore yellow sandals that morning, she explained that you just smile through your tears and remember that scar tissue is raised, stronger than your skin, evidence of the times you managed to go up against yourself and win, because you’ve lasted one more day breathing. Recovery is to be counted in grins, in faces lighting up, in letting yourself love other people again and trying your damnedest to love yourself; in the scars that fade gently, some to nothing, some to white and some to an ugly purple-rose-pink. You measure it every day you wake up and push yourself out of bed and look in the mirror and force yourself not to hate the person who looks back at you because that person doesn’t deserve it.

With Zayn spread out of the hardwood and Liam curled on the sofa, a dog-eared book of poems at Zayn’s side and novel closed in Liam’s lap, Liam recounts the girl’s words to Zayn. He looks over at Liam, and one of those soft, gentle, early-morning smiles brightens up his face and the dreary London outside the a balcony door. Zayn responds quietly, he says that world is a rollercoaster sometimes, fast and exhilarating and fragile, but other days, your life is a great ocean, the sea. You find yourself in the middle of the damn thing, and your fucking boat is in and you’ll never find land and you have no semblance of the ability to swim. Zayn tells Liam that his life was the ocean for a long time, an endless time, but now a life jacket has floated his way, he’s kicking his legs, the sun is out and he’s going to go home.

If Liam is honest with himself, something that he holds very dear to him as a skill and a value, he will admit that in his eyes, Zayn is not better. The boys agree: they aren’t sure that he is necessarily better, in the complete, 100% sense of the word, but he is improving, walking straight, head held high, on the path to recovery, to better, the elusive thing that is health. His slip-ups are less frequent, not as jarring or as messy or that big of a loss, a blow, not a heartbreaking setback but a setback none-the-less. He smiles again, they’re genuine, less forced, and Zayn is out of bed before noon most days, a great improvement where he slept past supper because he just didn't care.

“We’re going to be okay,” Zayn says to Liam, sounding sated and tired but hopeful, one night out of the blue, while they’re wrapped up in each other’s skin and sweat and the sheets Liam’s mother gave him two Christmases ago.

“You’re going to be okay,” Liam whispers in reply, and kisses Zayn’s nicotine stained fingers, runs his hands down his scars, and he hopes to god that it’s true.

**Author's Note:**

> as one of the first pieces i ever seriously wrote, and the first ever thing i'm posting on this website, i'd love any and all feedback. also, if you've ever suffered with any sort of self harm or sadness or anything, and you'd like to talk to me, feel free to send me a message (i think you can do that on this website? whatever. find me if you have to.) i'm always here to lend an ear if someone needs it. thank you x


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